


Lace Handprints

by Camlann



Series: Latticework Souls [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1622246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camlann/pseuds/Camlann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where soul mates leave unique tattoos of lattice work over their partners upon the first kiss, Darcy Lewis finds she has the oddest markings yet. Because she doesn't have just one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red

She’s in Europe when shit hits the fan. Bulgaria isn’t someplace she’s been before. But she finds it hard to not run a few back streets like she does. And it’s not good, not good. SHIELD scientists going down in remote labs was **not good** and she had taken off, Jane’s hand in hers as Intern took Selvig another way at her yell.

Not that he could have gone the way they had. Darcy had acted fast, faster than she ever thought she could, when the blood had flowed like that around the man Jane was talking to.

Move out of the way, seek secure shelter. Instinct.

And she’s glad she’s got Jane’s hand in hers because Thor would never forgive her. Why? The lace texture that combines both molecule symbols and ancient Asgardian text sprawling across the back of her friend’s hand. All it took was a kiss to the knuckles, which are bloodied when they lose their footing, Darcy scrambling for traction on wet stones that are older than old. Way old. Old as balls.

And there’s a shadow, someone standing over Jane, and Darcy isn’t a threat. Not much of one, at least. But she’s taken down a god before and with a squeal that was supposed to be a roar, she lunges.

Only to be caught around the throat and thrown backwards.

He’s warm, whoever he is. And the gun pointed at Jane finds a mate with the one pointed at her. But instead of pulling the trigger, there’s a pause. Something that is a fraction of a second too long and Darcy is panting, holding her throat that’s painfully sore already. She’s going to have a bruise and there’s a burning sensation crawling across her skin like a fire ant bite.

Those things **sucked** and Darcy scratches a bit at the skin as Mr. Incognito moves into the shadows. Somewhere between opening her eyes and seeing Jane in trouble and hitting the ground, both guns had been trained on her.

Her. Little Darcy Lewis. And she’d laugh if she wasn’t terrified.

Because as soon as he’s there, he’s gone, and Darcy is crawling over to Jane, checking to make sure one of those bullets didn’t make it into her. And she can hear a truck pull up, people with the eagle and shield on their arms pulling her away from her friend as she yells and kicks and tries to get her back.

SHIELD took everything from Jane once. They weren’t going to take Jane from her. So help her, she was going to go with that woman or not at all.

It’s not until she’s in the private bathroom off of Jane’s private room in a private hospital (and they can only say private so many times before Darcy gets that it’s top secret, not just private) that she realizes there’s something around her neck. Something that is intricate and has a lot of corners to it. Something that flows around her skin like a necklace, a dark red that is almost brown and faded a bit until it gets around to the sides where it lightens to something brighter.

It takes Jane waking up from where she hit her head to realize it doesn’t end there. Because the markings… they end with a bright red star on the back of her neck.

Darcy doesn’t know how she feels that her soul mate’s mark came from a killer. From someone would have killed Jane if given the chance. He must be professional, then, and that makes it worse. Because how is she supposed to know anything about soul mates when hers is on the run? When hers is… that kind of person. Has that kind of job. And wasn’t a soul mate’s mark supposed to be a kiss, a brush of lips, and that certainly hadn’t happened.

The plane ride back to the USA is quiet and she stays to her corner of the jet, SHIELD emblem on the top of it and black paint new on the sides. Because she has to **think** and the engine noise just makes her want to sleep.

Maybe he was the type of man that mimicked romance. After all, a kiss with a fist was better than none.

That Darcy throws up later shows exactly what she thinks of that.


	2. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those bullets were meant for them.

When the Triskelion falls in spectacular fashion, she’s back home in Pennsylvania. A vacation by all rights, after the events that happened in Bulgaria.

SHIELD thought she and Jane deserved it. She’s starting to think that SHIELD wanted them out of the way and apparently, death hadn’t worked. Because she’s online and she sees the information fly across Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere else. And she knows. She knows that there is something very wrong because her stomach twists and her neck burns too bright, even in her mind’s eye. She knows the date she was supposed to have died. It’s haunted her since that night.

Those bullets were meant for them.

But watching the falling defenses of the greatest protection she’s ever known, after the take down of Captain America on TV, she can’t be so sure what she feels. All she knows is that her fingers stray to her neck and she wishes that whoever he was… that he was there. Because at least she’d be safer if he was at her side than if he was off doing something else.

Maybe he was there, she thought with horror. And her palm meets her neck, gripping her throat gently because no. No, no, no. Bad Darcy. No thoughts like that, not that night when the world was going to Hell in a handbasket. He wasn’t a hero, but he didn’t do things like this, surely. He couldn’t and she wants to remind herself of what it was like to be in the presence of people who were greater than all of this. Thor is goodness knows where with Jane, but she has someplace she can go. And she packs her bags and drives to New York, swallowing down her fear and clenching shaking fingers around her steering wheel the closer she gets.

She’s only human. She’s not used to this world, even now after a year or two in it. But a deep breath and she steadies herself, the tattoo of red across her neck calming her somehow when she touches it.

It’s been trophy and a curse and a mystery. But as she came to terms with the idea that her soul mate wasn’t on the same path of righteous awesomeness that she was, she came to find it made her feel better.

She had a soul mate. She may not know who it was, but they were out there.

Darcy wondered what mark she’d left on him.

She doesn’t find out, of course. She can’t. And she walks into the museum that holds the Captain America exhibit. It smells of old things, books and metal and if she concentrates hard enough, bleach from the washing up at the end of the day.

Fingers trail over the mural that stands there, waving flag and Commandos and Cap. And she hasn’t met him but she stares for a long time at the man, wondering what he’s like.

Was he better than her own soul mate? Did they both think they were doing the right thing, though, despite their opposites? And she chews the color off her lip before she even makes it past the opening, sighing to herself as she moves to see if she’s even as tall as pre-serum Steve Rogers.

She is. Thank God. She didn’t want to be **that** short.

Sidling through the exhibit, she gets to the clothing section. And there’s a small, low whistle from her because dude with the bowler hat? Totally rocking it. There’s a gentle bump to her shoulder, though, and Darcy’s gaze turns from worn material and replica guns to a modern hoodie and dark eyes hidden in the shadow of a baseball cap.

“Really something else, isn’t it?” Darcy comments softly after a beat too long staring at this man that’s caught her full attention. He’s built just right that she just barely has to tip her head up to meet his gaze and he’s a bit scruffy. But it’s good on him and then she gets to his eyes, her words teetering off as she talks. “Who they were. What they did.”

Because those eyes are haunted and Darcy bites her lip when they focus in on her. And then they refocus and there’s something burning bright there that Darcy doesn’t know what to do with.

“You seem impressed by them.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Does everyone know the whole story?”

“What more was there to tell?”

That doesn’t get a reply but Darcy finds that the milling others about, the throngs of people that are flocking to the All-American Hero in their time of need, disappear when this man looks at her. And then she realizes that he’s not just looking at her, but her neck.

It’s a give up or go moment and this man seems to decide on the go. Because he steps closer, eyes never leaving hers, and Darcy sucks in a breath when fingers curl into hers.

Palm to palm, she feels the same itch that she had once before.

… No.

No. No, no, **no**. It couldn’t be the same man. This one was soft and gentle, strong hands at her wrist now instead of her throat. And Darcy gasps, moving backwards only to find that hand gone and the man disappearing into the crowd. She tries to follow, she does, but there’s no hope of that. Because he’s gone. Again. Without a kiss but with a linking of fingers that might be just as intimate to him as something like that. Because he’s a ghost, a phantom, and there’s no opera house she can rip apart to find him.

Looking down at her fist, Darcy can’t quite decide if she likes this or not. Because he’s got the most gorgeous eyes she’s ever seen despite the harried look behind them and a voice that’s like a sickness and she wants to **help**.

Whatever haunts him, she wants to help, and her skin burns with it.

Speaking of…

Opening her palm to itch it, Darcy already thinks she knows what she’s going to find. Dark red lines that turn to bright, though it makes no sense that it should happen twice in her lifetime. No one gets two soul mate bonds without there being two different people. And she doesn’t think these are two different people.

But when she opens her hand and her palm is the blooming center of a wildflower in a teal that goes darker to blue around the edges, she has to wonder if it isn’t two different men.

Maybe the killer had died. And now she had someone else.

Both out of reach and neither staying long enough to love. Darcy curls her fingers over her palm and swallows hard, finding the exit and passing by the memorial to a fallen soldier that Captain America knew once. Her hand trails over the glass as she starts to run past, skidding out of the Smithsonian and gasping for air on the steps.

It’s not **fair**. It’s not **right**. And she wants it to stop **hurting** that she can’t seem to find this man that haunts her but is supposed to love her.

She doesn’t notice the eyes on her, the way a shadow stays to the columns above where she’s sunk down to the marble steps. That there’s hesitation as the figure of a man steps into the sunlight, watching her trace the blooming flower on her hand and then set her forehead against it, grinding her teeth.

Only to disappear into the shadows again when she charges up, angry and upset, ready to beat the world bloody for doing this to her. She needs someone with her, she **wants** them with her. It didn’t matter that he was two different colors and patterns, though she didn’t know what that meant, not at all. She only knows that she wants him with her.

And he’s running away. Because he knows, he could recognize the pattern on her neck. And that’s what makes her think it’s the same man, despite the lack of gun.

She marches out of there that day, head high and right back to the small apartment Jane has in the city that she’s obviously not using. God knows where she actually is but Darcy just knows that she needs a place to stay. And this is it. She’ll look into something more permanent when she can, but right now, it seemed a good place to sleep.

If she wakes up with a blanket over her that wasn’t there before, she doesn’t think about it too hard. It would be better not to.


	3. Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who the Hell are you?

“Astrophysicist, Director Coulson. Not anything to do with any of this.”

Jane is pissed and Darcy is right there with her. They’ve been taken from their lab (without notice and frankly, without real clothes because hello, these are her pajamas) very early in the morning and brought to someplace Heimdall only knew where, to be asked about a man in a tank.

Granted, from what Darcy had seen, he’s a very attractive man. But then, she’d only seen the line of his naked back and the curve of his tightly panted ass. So.

She couldn’t really say either way. Especially since she needed **coffee**. Sweet sin, did she need it.

But apparently, whatever was going on with this dude, Son of Coul thought Jane could fix without it and right away. And said dude is in a tank, a Hulk tank, but that’s pretty much all Darcy has caught. Her cheek rests on her branded palm, falling asleep at the table they’re at, before she’s being tugged by the hoodie off her stool and into the hallway. She did not sign up for this all those years ago and she’s going to seriously taze someone for waking her up this early.

“I assure the both of you that this is simply something I would like you to check out,” the Director comments, shaking his head. “I’m afraid it has to do with the device we found him with more than the man, himself. But we thought that you could, perhaps, test to see if the device had affected him at all.”

Jane is mumbling, which is either really good or really bad. And Darcy is sliding on the tiled floors because the little rubber pads on the bottoms of her fluffy socks are not holding up to quality control as slippers.

Through a thick, metal door and Darcy has to step around Jane to see who’s behind the glass.

Only to find the same eyes she’s dreamed about since the museum.

Darcy doesn’t even realize she’s moved for the door until there’s a guard there with his arms around her waist. And she’s swinging her little fists, growling in her half awake state. It doesn’t seem to do much to get her free, but the man inside the tank is trying to pacify her with raised hands, one which is completely metal and Darcy doesn’t even care about that.

“Let me at ‘im!”

“You know this man, Miss Lewis?”

“You just let me into that tank there and see. Now let ME AT ‘IM.”

It might be against his better judgement but Phil Coulson opens the tank to her and Darcy stomps up to the man inside it. She’s too tired for this shit and she lets him know exactly that, whoever he is.

“You ASSHOLE. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you? Since I was fucking TWELVE. I thought it’d be cool to do the whole high school love thing but not one kiss made lattices appear. And sure, okay. That was fine. It **totally** was. But college. All through New Mexico’s shit? Where the HELL WERE YOU when the Destroyer came out of NOWHERE and I could have **died**! So many times since then, too, and one of them was **you**. You BASTARD.”

She’s yelling and Jane is in the doorway staring and the Director is outside the tank very calmly watching her lose her mind. But Darcy doesn’t care, reaching out to smack this man across the cheek only to feel a hand on the small of her back the same time lips crash into hers.

And there’s blooming pain up and across her spine, weaving over the bone and across soft lips as her fingers grasp at the back of this strange man’s neck. It’s hard but **real** and Darcy melts into the kiss, giving back just as much as she gets and then some.

There’s nothing she can do after breaking away, foreheads resting together and blue-green eyes closed to the world and the man who’s holding her. But eventually, when her breath returns, she does go looking at him. Closely. And he holds up his hand, skin and bones, but… there it was. A mark not unlike her own.

It’s the same star in the center of his palm that sits at the back of her neck, only there are swirls all around it that match doodles she often puts in the margins of her notes and it’s a comfortable, dark green. Interlocking with the red is blue, stylized stems with thorns and leaves. Her own parts of flowers to match the bloom on her palm.

Pulling back more, her hands cradling his much larger one, she can see red mixing over both. The same red her star is, and they’ve gone backwards. From angry to cool to calm for him and right the opposite for her. Which means what’s going up her back is green, interlocking triangles that are waiting to be filled in with color that won’t come, almost shined and glossed. Not really a pattern at all, more a chain, and she slides to her tiptoes, realizing that the same pattern of shapes sits at the back of his neck where her hands were, a few faint ones on his lips as well.

She’s his. And he’s hers. Three in one, one in three. It’s a weird mix and Darcy lowers herself to flat feet, searching out the man’s gaze and softly asking the only question that matters right now.

“Who the Hell **are** you?”

“My name’s Bucky. Or James Barnes. I’m known as the Winter Soldier.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bond](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1846684) by [jacedesbff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacedesbff/pseuds/jacedesbff)




End file.
